


and the wind chimes sing and you are left smouldering

by theholychesse



Series: Pili [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Generally Upsetting, Gross Imagery, The Void, ironically thanos and the chitauri are kinda nurturing here, it aint pretty, its not anything graphic but it isnt anything light, loki is not a good person but this didn't help, this is pretty much a fic that tackles 'what happened to loki in the void' and
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8439940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theholychesse/pseuds/theholychesse
Summary: (“No, Loki.” Utters the Allfather. And Loki falls.)Wherein Loki experiences sensory deprivation for over a year.





	

“No, Loki.” Utters the Allfather.  
  
Something, sticky and small and fond of wrapping around the meat of his heart, unwinds, takes a shuddering breath, and writhes. Loki’s throat grinds against his tongue, wetness gathers at his eye. His lips want to tremble, for a moment, before he becomes aware.  
  
Aware of the vast emptiness below him. An emptiness that no thing, whether it be Aesir or a detestable monster, can never hope to hold onto a heartbeat in.

Thor knows it before Loki himself does, and his face shifts, and he tightens his hold. Loki meets Odin’s eye, feels a treacherous trickle of moisture release from his eye and—  
  
He lets go.

And Loki falls.

 

* * *

 

Loki falls, and then, all of a sudden, stops falling. He has not landed nor has he sputtered out, a candled flame doused with a cap.  He has simply stopped.  
  
He is still in the void, and in the darkness, in the cold, in the startling lack of sensation, the lack of _anything_. It is staggering, the fact that he has stopped.

Falling means that air whips around you, a torrent of little claws tugging at soft cheeks and golden inlays, that gravity is yanking you down by your limbs, relentlessly, and falling means that an end is in sight. Now, he is… Floating, for the lack of a better term.

Loki tests the air, or the airless space he is in, and a harsh swipe lacks the resistance of the air of Asgard, of Vanaheim, of any place that actually exists and is not this sheer nothingness which he has ended up in.

Loki’s breath quickens. He can breathe, but there is nothing here to _breathe_. Whatever it is he inhales has no taste, no feeling, no sensation, and it’s almost like he hasn’t breathed in the first place but the fact that his lungs do not ache prove the contrary.  
  
There is no light. He can hear nothing. He can feel the weight of his armour, feel a layer of sweat go steadily dry on him, but nothing more, not even the weight of his own fingers attached to his shaking hands, the result of a gravity that does not exist in the space between realms.  
  
The wetness at Loki’s eyes has remained, but not worsened, and the lurking thing in his chest and the ache of betrayal still burns strong. It is joined by a tremble in his chest whenever he breathes, as he paws at the air, as he claws at it, attempting to shift and move and feel the blood flow to his head as he goes against gravity but—He feels nothing.  
  
Neither does he feel the sensation of death, whatever it might be. He doesn’t feel his heart stuttering to a stop nor does he feel his lungs constrict and refuse to work and he does not feel his self being dragged down to Niflhel, kicking and screaming.

His breath, his breath which draws upon nothing, quickens, and he pulls on his magic and aims to scuttle though on the branches and get _away_ from here but—  
  
His magic, faithful and dutiful and a warm presence under his sternum, slips away. Loki pulls again, and it slides out of his fingers leaving not a hint of presence on his fingers.  Loki scrambles and uses his entire being to stubbornly pull, and pull, and _pull_ at his magic but—  
  
It squirms away, leaving Loki gasping and blinking in its wake.  
  
Loki’s breath hitches, and he feels his hands tighten, and the events of the last few days, of being a monster who came so, so, so, so _close_ to killing every other monster out there before being disgraced and denied, wash over, swallowing him greedily, and, and for a long time…  
  
Loki can do nothing but shake, and feel everything crushing in on him, swallowing his heart with putrid fire and tearing away at his throat until there is nothing left, feels that little writhing thing claw up his throat and emerge to strike at his eyes and brain and head, and he is left raw and malformed and nothing but red sinews of meat but—  
  
Loki still lives.

* * *

 

Loki gasps back into waking and his eyes open up to peer at black. He hears nothing. He feels nothing but his armour and the cloying sensation of his own sticky skin.

He is floating.

Loki, for the longest time, can’t do anything but stare at the darkness, breathe, and interlink his hands in a quivering imitation of pensiveness.  
  
Loki has fallen, wanting to—Not die, exactly, but to merely stop _being._ And Loki has woken to with the sensation of nothing but his own lungs shifting his ribs, moving his skin, his clothes, and his armour.

No matter what he does, no matter what angle he approaches his magic, how gently or harshly he pulls, no matter whatever focusing exercises he does to channel it, it does nothing. His magic gurgles and falls back into his own swirling core before he can even as much as taste a spark of power glide over his tongue.

Loki heaves, heaves his breath and then, at the realization that he can feel nothing and has no magic and is so far from people that even the Norns are surely left gaping at what he’s done, he heaves up the thin contents of his stomach.

And he nearly chokes on it, a total lack of gravity making it that the sick stays in his mouth and it is with humiliating effort that he spits it out, and is forced to shift away from his own sick in the space of nothingness which he has gotten himself into.  
  
It is not swimming, but it is almost like it. Floating, but not quite.  
  
Loki falls, wiping at his lips with the back of his hand, breathing heavily.  
  
It is dark, he can hear nothing, and all he can feel is his armour and the presence of his own skin.

Loki’s breath quickens, and his fingers shake again.

He can feel nothing, he can hear nothing, can _see_ nothing, here, there has to be a way out—He shifts and moves in the nothingness, swimming and floating and falling all at once but he gets nowhere, just further away from his own sick.  
  
Loki can hear his own breath. He can hear the thuds of his own heart, of his own blood pumping in his veins, and soon, he can feel his stomach churning, his intestines squirm, can feel his thoughts _howl_ when he thinks of Asgard and of Odin and of Thor and he can hear nothing but himself, can see nothing, can feel nothing but the presence of his armour on his body and the slide of cloth against his skin whenever he moves and the sensation of his skin sticking, reluctantly, to his muscles.  
  
Loki makes sure to give his breaths more harshness, to see if he can hear them. He can’t. He can’t hear himself speak or scream or speak spells with no power in them, can’t hear his finger tapping against the metal of his armour, only can hear the lulls and frantic beating of his heart, can hear his lungs move, ribs yield, diaphragm shift, and it all to start over again.  
  
Loki breathes, and he doesn’t know what to do.

 

* * *

 

Loki can see nothing but the dark, can hear the grinds of his own bones over each other as he moves, and can feel his armour and his skin and that is all. He can, too, hear his seidr crackling. He can feel the electric signals in his brain crackle, can hear the pop of his cells dividing and their squeals as they die, and he can hear his own life not having run on, but having stopped still, in this space that lies between realms and in which there is nothing but Loki.

And because there is nothing but Loki, he thinks of everything _but_ Loki. He thinks of how he doesn’t truly know if Mother is alright. He thinks on how things would have been if Heimdall had died in the ice that he had been caked in. He thinks on Thor, and how things would have been if he’d come to his senses, and settled back, to watch Jotunheim die in an inglorious whimper when their planet would have shattered into pieces at the force of the Bifrost’s gaze.

He thinks of his fall from the bridge. He thinks of Thor’s expression, as he fell, and he could swear that Thor’s eyes bore a glint in them as he fell.  
  
In the void, he can hear the rumbles of stars being born and dying. In the void, he can hear atoms of sweat stick to the cloth of his tunic. In the void, he can hear his life-thread unraveling and tangling with the sheer nothingness of the void, and corrupting.  
  
In the void, he cannot hear anything.

 

* * *

 

Nay, Thor’s eyes did not bare a mere glint, he thinks, as he looks over the events that transpired on the bridge. Loki had been looking down, hearing the screams of the Frost Giants as they knew they had been bested, but did not wish to yield to death, like they should. Loki had stood on the Rainbow Bridge, transfixed by what salvation he had brought to the Nine Realms, when Odin put his hand on Loki’s shoulder.  
  
And the Allfather had said, “No, Loki.” And Loki let go.  
  
(That’s not how it goes.)

And the Allfather had said, “Good, Loki.” And Thor pushed Loki off the edge in his jealousy. Thor had always been the jealous brother.  
  
(Good.)

Loki, as he feels the fleeting sensation of someone stroking at his cheek, leans into it, and feels it dissolving into the nothingness of the void, thinks. And Loki thinks. And Loki thinks, and realizes.  
  
That Odin had no right to fall into the Odinsleep, no right to dunk out of trouble like some spoiled _brat_ when he was confronted by his changeling son. That Odin should not have sprung back to life, magically, when the golden sun came marching in to save Asgard from the traitorous silver foundling.

He realizes that he should have never sent the Destroyer to Midgard, because then, Thor was given a chance to heroically save the day, and then, blood still surging with battle-lust, he was able to strike down Loki like he was nothing but a bundle of dry sticks and leaves that was supposed to be pulverized for cheap tavern flour.

He realizes that the second father who’d abandoned him should have met the fate of the first, at the end of Loki’s blade.

Loki is in Asgard. He treads the green walkways with the perfect blue sky peering down at him, hears the squeals of children far away, and feels the rays of the sweet sunshine lick his skin, and feels the weight of his own fingers in their sockets.  
  
Loki is in the void, and he tears his floating fingers out with his teeth and laps up the blood with his tongue and when he wakes up he feels the funny feeling of a mouth after a long slumber, feels the presence of all ten fingers on his hands, and feels absolutely nothing but his armour and

And something else.

* * *

 

A million faces press up against him, and he is swimming in them. He is swimming in what he’s done, and his cheeks are grabbed by a pair of cold hands.  
  
“I should have smashed your head in while I had the chance.” Loki spits in the face of his monster father, smashes his elbow into his chin, shifts away, and finds a million versions of Laufey all laughing at him.  
  
Loki wonders how a monster mother looks like. And he is met with the visage of Frigga with blue skin, red eyes, black blood, and a wicked look on her face that wants to tear Loki up and greedily slurp up all of his juices.  
  
Loki thinks on what happened on the bridge. He remembers groveling, forehead flat against the ground, begging for life. He remembers being dragged to his feet, meeting the leering visage of Thor, of Odin’s hand on his shoulder, and his stony expression twisting into a grim rictus, and he remembers being tossed off like a rosy red apple that’s rotten on the inside.

He remembers Odin saying, in a hushed, pleased tone, “You have done good, my son.” Into Thor’s ear. Remembers hearing the bells that announced Thor’s coronation ringing, and it being the very last thing he heard before

The Void.

Loki remembers his face being smeared into a bloody mess under the heel of Thor's boot, Odin and Frigga and Sif and everyone who’s ever known egging Thor on, wanting to see the false prince’s blood spilt for all of the land to see, to see him slain and his body presented and jeered at for all, by children and the elderly and men and women and friends and enemies.

Remembers being tripped over by Thor when he was just a toddling child, and for a servant to rather snicker at him behind her hand than help him up.  
  
Loki remembers when his birthday was glossed over in favour of a celebration of Thor’s newest battle.  
  
Remembers being told in subtle messages and spells to secure Vanaheim’s alliance by sneaking into the bed of their smirking ambassador.  
  
Loki remembers being odd, but loved, remembers his own self esteem tearing him from those he loves to the point where he would entertain thoughts of being uselessness. But he also remembers being hated and used from the day he was born, remembers a whole world out to make him a monster, and then screaming at the result, and the latter reality is much more easier to stomach and to remember.

 

So Loki does.  
  
And Loki remembers Thor grabbing him by the neck and hurling him over the Rainbow Bridge, Odin spitting out a, “Good riddance.” To the failure of a pawn he had cultivated.

Loki imagines landing. And dying there and then, and never having to think or remember at all.  
  
It is dark. There are no sounds. And it feels like his skin should slip off, with a few well-placed rubs of his long nails.

 

* * *

  
Loki does not wake. He does not sleep. Loki is.  
  
Loki is.  
  
Loki is.  
  
Loki is the moon to Thor’s sun, the weak little sickly thing to make his light shine all the brighter. That was Odin’s plan.  
  
It is not what happened.  
  
Loki is stronger, greater, better than Thor in every single way. And yet, Odin favoured the fruit of his loins over the souvenir brought forth when he was knee deep in Jötunn blood, because of course he did. But Loki, not Thor, is the rightful King of Asgard. He is the real heir to being Allfather, the best, and only, option to sit upon Hlidskjalf, and to peer out at the Nine Realms, and judge and rule them all. And his Norn given right is to kill monsters and heroes and himself as much as he damn well liked.

Loki wanted to stop thinking. To stop being.  
  
And instead, Loki is falling, in a world where there is nothing but his own thoughts, and his memories.  
  
Memories that he’s scraped over with a shovel, burying ones that didn’t matter, and putting ones that did on filthy mounds to stick in like thorns in his being.

Loki is ready to die. But he knows he will not, because in the void, Loki did not exist. In fact, Loki did not exist at all. He is the void given sentience and an existential nightmare and he has crafted a whole life just by being. He is nothing.

Loki is the universe. He is the ebb and flow of entropy, the burst of starlight and the hungry blackholes which swallow them up. He can crush galaxies with a mere fleeting want, he can deconstruct cosmic laws with a light touch, and he can make a happy life for himself. He is everything.

Loki stands strapped to a tree by the intestines of his own spawn, and he wails, and as he does, the End shakes with him.

Loki runs along after his brother, his tall, muscled, brave brother in the form of a clueless little wench whose sole purpose is to die.  
  
  
Loki is the God of Stories, and Loki decides that Loki cannot end like this.  
  
  
Loki imagines himself landing. Imagines, after an actual fall, where his hair is swept up and he can twist and hurtle and feel the effects of gravity, imagines landing. And smashing like a watermelon onto the earth, cracked open and bleeding with his organs turned into syrup and his bones into fine ash and the only sounds he can hear is his own magic knitting him together.  
  
His magic, that was held, untapped, for so very long, that stitches together a wet mess of Aesir and monster and rot into something that breathes, lives, and is.  
  
Loki is not in the Void. He can see his own blood. He can hear his ragged breaths, and the sick squelches of his tissue tangling back together.  
  
He feels everything. And Loki dies.

Loki’s magic jolts him back together, making him writhe and scream and cry onto the desolate rock that he is lying on.  
  
Loki feels his body. He feels weight. He feels frail muscles and frail bones and a dry well of magic, he feels the presence of his nails in his fingers, he feels his hair sweeping into his face, he feels the point and pressure of rocks and pain and heat and gravity and every single obliteringly grand thing that he hasn’t felt for so, so, so, so long.  
  
Loki cannot take it.  
  
He wakes to the sound of soft voices and chitters. The noise makes his ears bleed and throat to throw out a howl, and Loki dies once again when he is stirred.

This time the cold blue jolt of something else brings him back to life.  
  
Loki can feel everything, to the point where he cannot think. Cannot be.  
  
So he doesn’t, for so, so, so long, even as a six fingered hand glides over his face, smoothes back some hair, and finds him a tender fruit ripe for the taking.

 

* * *

 

Loki wakes up in pinched and agonized blurs and wails, and, at times, hands hold him down and send sleep back into his veins, and sometimes, they prop him up, make him stare at them, hear their sounds, feel their chitin armour, before they allow him to sink back into the almost death that sleep brings.

Loki wakes, once, to find a great thing with cerulean eyes staring down softly at him, and he is unsure if it is Death, Mother, or something in-between.

He is scared of it nonetheless, flinching away, finding cloth and metal to be despicable but not unbearable, and the thing chuckles, before murmuring out a, “You will do us good, godling.”

And it smashes his head in and picks up all of the pieces and glues them all together with brute force, weaving his empty spaces together with subtle webs, and kisses Loki back to life, to being, to existing.

And Loki stares up at an immortal Titan, and, for the countless time, regrets not having died long, long, long ago.

* * *

 

They give Loki a room, that is this close to being humiliating and this close to being comfortable. They give him food, space, but they do not allow him to die.  
  
Loki stops trying after the eighth meal. The eighth tray that is sent back, full of the meat and fruits of the things that lurk in the void, just like all of the ones before, but this one has been stirred, at the very least.  
  
Loki stops trying to die, stops trying to think that he is in the Void, and accepts that this is real. That he is real.  
  
That his betrayal was real. That Thor’s grin, as Loki was pushed off the edge, was real. That Loki’s birth right to rule and destroy and remake everything in the cosmos was real.  
  
A thing grabs him by the lapels, points him at a little green and blue planet that stinks of pollution and sordid primitivism, and says, “Why not start there?”  
  
Loki is given a scepter. He is given an army. He is given a glorious purpose.  
  
Loki hurtles through space, emerges smoking and kneeling out the other side, and grins at the thought of soon bearing Thor’s limp, bleeding body at the end of his blade.  
  
And Loki **is.**

**Author's Note:**

> In the end, this isn't a gift, but when I wrote this I was thinking heavily of Lise and how utterly divine their fics are. I've been wanting to write a Loki fic for an absolute while now, it was even my first fic but I haven't tackled one since. I was writing this today and was kinda starting to wane, so I off-handedly checked Lise's front page and saw a new story.
> 
> Which kinda gave me the strength to do this! So, thank you, Lise! And thank you to all of the other lovely authors that satisfied my Loki craze thus far.
> 
> Also its five am here yall ill probs wake up and edit any mistakes you see so O


End file.
